People

Founders

Trevor Blackwell

Founder, Expert

Trevor Blackwell is a roboticist who in 2007 built the first dynamically balancing biped robot. He has published papers on congestion control in high speed wide area networks, signalling protocol architecture, and file system performance. He has a BEng from Carleton, and a PhD in Computer Science from Harvard.

Paul Graham

Founder, Retired

Paul Graham is the author of On Lisp (1993), ANSI Common Lisp (1995), and Hackers & Painters (2004). In 1995, he and Robert Morris started Viaweb, the first SaaS company, which in 1998 became Yahoo Store. In 2002 he discovered a simple spam filtering algorithm that inspired the current generation of filters. He has an AB from Cornell and a PhD in Computer Science from Harvard.

Jessica Livingston

Founder, Partner

Jessica Livingston was previously VP of marketing at investment bank Adams Harkness, where she managed an award-winning rebranding of the company. She is the author of Founders at Work (2007), a book of interviews with startup founders. She has a BA in English from Bucknell.

Robert Morris

Founder, Retired

Robert Morris is a professor of computer science at MIT, where he is a member of the PDOS group. He has published extensively on wireless networks, distributed operating systems, and peer-to-peer applications. In 1988 his discovery of buffer overflow first brought the Internet to the attention of the general public. He has an AB and PhD in Computer Science from Harvard.

Partners

Sam Altman

Partner

Sam Altman was co-founder and CEO of Loopt, which was funded by Y Combinator in 2005 and acquired by Green Dot in 2012. At Green Dot, he was the CTO and is now on the Board of Directors. Sam also founded Hydrazine Capital. He studied computer science at Stanford, and while there worked in the AI lab.

Gustaf Alstromer

Partner

Gustaf Alstromer spent 4.5 years at Airbnb where he worked as a Product Lead on the Growth team, a team he helped start in 2012. Prior to Airbnb, Gustaf was Head of Growth at Voxer, and before that, he was CEO & co-founder of Heysan, which was part of the YC W07 batch.

Tim Brady

Partner

Tim Brady was co-founder of Imagine K12, an edtech accelerator that merged with YC in 2016. Prior to that, Tim was Yahoo's first employee in 1995 and wrote the business plan that attracted Yahoo's first venture capital. Tim spent eight years as Yahoo's Chief Product Officer. He holds a BS in electrical engineering from Stanford and and MBA from Harvard.

Paul Buchheit

Partner

Paul Buchheit is the creator of GMail. While at Google he also built the prototype for AdSense, and came up with Google's now famous slogan "Don't be evil." In 2007 he was one of the founders of Friendfeed, which in 2009 became Facebook's largest acquisition to date. He has a BS and MS in Computer Science from Case Western Reserve University.

Dalton Caldwell

Partner

Dalton Caldwell was the co-founder and CEO of imeem (acquired by MySpace in 2009), and the co-founder and CEO of App.net. He has a BS in Symbolic Systems and a BA in Psychology from Stanford University.

Adora Cheung

Partner

Adora Cheung was co-founder and CEO of Homejoy, which was funded by Y Combinator in 2010. Before that, she ran product at Slide. She has a bachelor's in computer science from Clemson University and is an economics PhD dropout at the University of Rochester.

Jared Friedman

Partner

Jared Friedman was co-founder of Scribd, which was funded by Y Combinator in 2006 and grew to be one of the top 100 sites on the web. Jared previously worked at a pioneering AI company and studied computer science at Harvard.

Anu Hariharan

Partner

Anu Hariharan is a Partner with the YC Continuity Fund. Previously, Anu was an investment partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where she worked actively with the management teams of portfolio companies including Airbnb, Instacart, Medium, OfferUp and Udacity. Prior to this, Anu was a Principal at BCG's Private Equity Practice and was a senior software engineer at Qualcomm. Anu holds an MS in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech and an MBA from The Wharton School.

Aaron Harris

Partner

Aaron Harris was co-founder of Tutorspree, which was funded by Y Combinator in 2011. Before Tutorspree he worked at Bridgewater Associates, where he managed product and operations for an analytics group. He has an AB in History and Literature from Harvard.

Carolynn Levy

Partner

Carolynn Levy was previously at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati, where she helped hundreds of startups with legal questions. She has a BA in political science from UCLA and JD from the USF School of Law, and is a member of the State Bar of California.

Jon Levy

Partner

Jon Levy previously counseled public and private technology companies as an attorney for Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati. He also ran ThinkEquity's private placement department and worked as a Managing Director at Merriman Curhan & Ford. Jon earned a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School, and a B.A. in English Literature and Religious Studies from Wesleyan University.

Kat Manalac

Partner

Kat Manalac was Chief of Staff to Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of reddit, before joining YC as its Director of Outreach. Prior to that, Kat was at WIRED Magazine where she managed brand and strategy. Kat has a BS in Communications from Northwestern University.

Eric Migicovsky

Partner

Eric Migicovsky founded Pebble Technology (YC W11), which was acquired by Fitbit in 2016. While studying engineering at the University of Waterloo in 2008, Eric began building smartwatches with a group of friends. In April 2012, Eric and his team launched Pebble on Kickstarter, where it became the most successful crowdfunded project in Kickstarter’s history. Pebble sold over 2,000,000 watches.

Kirsty Nathoo

Partner

Kirsty Nathoo was previously an audit manager at PwC based in Cambridge UK, where she audited tech and biotech companies ranging from startups to public companies. She has an MEng in electrical and information sciences from Cambridge, and qualified as a Chartered Accountant with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

Geoff Ralston

Partner

Geoff Ralston ran engineering at Four11, where he built RocketMail, one of the first web mail services, which in 1997 became Yahoo! Mail. At Yahoo! Geoff worked in engineering, then ran a business unit, then became Chief Product Officer. After Yahoo! he was CEO of Lala, which was acquired in 2009 by Apple. In 2011 Geoff co-founded the world’s first educational technology accelerator, Imagine K12 which funded dozens of edtech companies including ClassDojo, Remind, and Panorama Education. Imagine K12 merged with YC in 2016. He has an AB in Computer Science from Dartmouth, an MS in Computer Science from Stanford, and an MBA from INSEAD.

Ali Rowghani

Partner

Ali Rowghani is Managing Partner of YC Continuity. Previously, he served as the Chief Operating Officer of Twitter, Inc. from 2012 to 2014 and as Twitter’s Chief Financial Officer from 2010 to 2012. For the 8 years prior to his time at Twitter, Ali served in several roles at Pixar Animation Studios, Inc., including as Chief Financial Officer and as Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning. Ali holds a BA and MBA, both from Stanford University.

Michael Seibel

Partner

Michael Seibel was the co-founder and CEO Justin.tv and Socialcam. Socialcam sold to Autodesk in 2012 and under the leadership of Emmett Shear, Justin.tv became Twitch.tv and sold to Amazon in 2014. Before getting into startups, he spent a year as the finance director for a US Senate campaign and in 2005, Michael graduated from Yale University with a BA in political science.

Visiting Partners

Holly Liu

Visiting Partner

Holly Liu founded Kabam, a company that started as a corporate social network then turned into fan communities for TV shows and sports, and exited as mobile gaming. Holly was in charge of product design and was lead designer on their flagship franchise Kingdoms of Camelot, a game that grossed over $250 million in revenue. She later oversaw the worldwide People and Culture function. Kabam grew to over 1,500 employees and sold to Netmarble and FoxNext in 2017.

Diego Rey

Visiting Partner

Diego Rey co-founded GeneWEAVE while working on his PhD at Cornell in 2010 and sold it to Roche in 2015. GeneWEAVE develops infectious disease diagnostics for detecting and identifying bacteria and determining their antimicrobial susceptibility. GeneWEAVE went on to raise $25MM and grow to 50 employees before being acquired. Diego was CTO at GeneWEAVE and stayed on at Roche as Head of Research for his division for two years before joining YC.